Phil Sharp wins Figaro opener

Ex-Route du Rhum winner first home in Solo Grande Motte

Former Mini sailor and Route du Rhum Class 40 winner Phil Sharp has won the first official Figaro event in the Mediterranean this year, the Solo Grande Motte. This three day offshore race involved a half-way restart due to interference from the French Navy. Ironically Sharp's victory comes just days after the Artemis Offshore Academy selection board decided not to grant their scholarship to him.

Sharp reports on the race:

Prior to the Solo Grande Motte, just over a week ago, to be told I hadn’t been selected for the Artemis scholarship was needless to say disappointing, but I soon realised that this would not dampen any objectives I had to get to the startline of the Solitaire du Figaro August. Arriving back in La Grande Motte race for what is the official qualification race for the Solitaire for the Mediterranean Figaro brigade, I felt a particularly strong urge for revenge.

Yet again the forecast was for incredibly light gradient wind for the first two days, but with the likely chance of a sea breeze during the afternoon. Therefore, so we wouldn’t be offshore forever, the original course to Sardinia and back was shortened instead to a more coastal route east, around through the islands off Hyeres to a mark off the harbour of St Raphael, near Frejus, and then returning to La Grande Motte – a course length of some 300 miles.

Fortunately we got away in some breeze and we made some fairly good progress down towards Marseille that evening, whereupon things predictably went very light after sunset. After the wind backed and headed us, I chose to tack off fairly early to get offshore for the night. This went well and I was lead boat out of the nine competitors most of the night until about 4 am. Annoyingly then the breeze offshore then disappeared altogether, and a couple of masthead lights inshore started ghosting past me in the remnants of some drainage wind.

Throughout the morning we sailed upwind sailing along the coast, past Toulon, and then inside the islands of Hyeres by midday, where I had worked my way from forth back to second, behind Mika Mergui and just ahead of Arthur Le Vaillant. Happy with my setup, I went to grab some sleep on the foredeck, and just after drifting off, got the biggest fright of my life when a Eurofighter chose its flight path to pass 20 m over the top of my mast, at a cruising speed of some 100 times mine! It was literally like a bomb going off, and killed any chance of sleep that afternoon with paranoia that I might actually get a heart attack if it happened again.

I reached St Raphael after it got dark and as I feared, ran completely out of breeze right next to the rocks, and watched Arthur sail right up to the back of me, where we then both sat there for half an hour, dead in the water. We had a bit of a chat and a laugh over the generally slowness of the situation, and then eventually got some breeze to help us escape the bay and crawl back along the coast just inside Hyeres islands. Upon reaching the sound we promptly parked up again, and by dawn, Sam and Mathieu, who had been some 15 miles astern at the mark rounding, had closed to within just one mile. Having chosen to go outside of us and avoid our wind hole they then had the misfortune of being intercepted by a French navy vessel, who had decided to blow up some of their own waters that day and ordered them to divert course to sail south of the island. Leaving them little choice!

This basically messed up the whole race for them, and following a call to the race director, the race was abandoned despite two days of racing, and a decision made to restart the race at the western end of the sound and race directly back to La Grande Motte. With over 20 knots of breeze at times we had a really great day of racing, tacking up the shore close to the cliffs and headlands, with the lead changing several times. That evening I decided to tack offshore to seek out a left shift to the west, whilst the others opted to stay close to the coast for the night. Unbelievably, despite taking an entirely different strategy, when I rejoined the coast in the early hours of the morning I sailed straight smack bang into the middle of the fleet again. Figaro racing is just destined to be close no matter what the hell you do!

By dawn I had found some good speed on the boats around me and stayed at the helm the whole morning, in the zone, although a problem with a leaking ballast gate meant I had to keep pumping water out of the leeward tank to windward. There was also by this time a really nasty smell from down below due to some early race milk spillage, resulting in all my sleeping being on deck.

There was a final bit of drama squeezing around the final headland before the approach to La Grande Motte, where the corridor of breeze on the shoreline got so narrow, I was forced to tack up the shore in depths of 2 – 2.5 m to hold my lead (Figaros draw 2m!). I touched the sand during one tack but fortunately the boat kept moving, and I eventually crossed the finish line in first place, 10 minutes ahead of Mathieu Girolet, marking a really positive finish to the end of my winter sailing programme in the Med.

Now it’s all go on the sponsorship hunt over the next couple of weeks, as I search for a partner for the Solitaire du Figaro and continue my progress and momentum which I feel is stronger than ever at the moment. I’m really starting to now realise why this class is so addictive for the French and can’t wait to see this class break into the UK.

More here